


Remember, Brother

by drvology



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:05:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drvology/pseuds/drvology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam remembers everything. It's the only way he keeps himself going--to remember. Who he's supposed to be, what to pretend he no longer wants. How he'd lost Dean to Hell, Hell itself, how to hide carrying the lucid burden of that place and the stain of this life on their souls. Sam will soon be forced to remember everything, all over again, in a way even he couldn't have predicted or quite believe. || <a href="http://drvsilla.livejournal.com/690007.html">Also on LJ</a> || Underage is 15/19</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember, Brother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [giandujakiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/giandujakiss/gifts).



> A long time ago at a charity auction far, far away, a story was won but never received from me. It's much to my chagrin that it's always managed to escape my full attention, despite never leaving my To-Write List. Obviously a greatly revised take on what once was discussed, given how much canon and character evolutions have happened since then, but I truly hope it appeals.

Sam rubbed his temples and surveyed the tabletop again, strewn with newspaper clippings and a punchlist of Internet-found facts and articles, a flyer announcing the arrival of a new kind of circus to town.

_Messers Hain & Jinx's Peculiar Vagabond Grotesquery of Alchemy & Wonder_

There wasn't anything Sam could discern that was terribly unusual, world-apocalypse or otherwise notable about this case, and he appreciated that. It was nice to think about tackling a basic hunt, rare in the past years of epic battles but familiar in its rote; he'd found he'd missed that.

Reportedly, there was something not quite right going on, attached to the show or caused by it. Heard as a tidbit here, a rumor there, mysterious happenings that to most would be skimmed-over items in the back pages of the paper, but to Sam and Dean more than enough to go on, prompt they investigate.

The Grotesquery was apparently all sideshow and no mainstage, hawking its unspeakable, fascinating and unsettling acts and personages for the public to gorge their morbid curiosity upon. It was also followed by a trail of suspicious injuries and happenings that could be a ghost, the occult, or who knew what.

Most of these things were snake oil, peculiar but unremarkable artifacts, and illusion. It was the potential underbelly of menace that caught Sam and Dean's interest. _Who knew what_ was their speciality, after all.

The traveling show happened to cross their path, bird-dogged them at dinner last night when their waitress at the local greasy spoon talked it up. She was keen to go, probably as excited by the prospect of it being perhaps a dangerous undertaking as seeing its curiosities and wares.

They'd decided to check it out, why not, and nothing lost giving a day to making sure.

Sam shifted his attention from their preliminary findings to Dean, perched on the foot of the barely-double bed closest to the bathroom. Dean used to insist on being closest to the door, to the threat, to manning their best point of exit. In recent years had given up on that, why bother with so much separation, things that killed you in sleep or could blip in anywhere from nowhere, were already poisoning your soul.

Dean finished tying his boots, checked the knife strapped to his calf, tugged the hem of his jeans back down to hit at the bridge of his foot. Sam watched every motion and gesture. The strength of Dean's fingers, the work of Dean's tendons and calloused hands, Dean's overall efficient competence. These things so long-known they weren't learned and remembered to Sam, they were truths. 

Essential to him as an old-fashioned hunt. 

A relative comparative summation of their lives today, what they maintained with habits and blind recall and ingrained patterns--themselves, their relative sanities and fraying ends, the distance between them a barrier without representing a complete divide.

"What?"

Dean had caught Sam staring, zoned out on the place Dean still absently gripped a fold of denim, last cursory check that the knife looked naturally concealed.

Sam shook his head. "Nothing."

He passed a running glance over the scattered files and knew none of it would be worth taking, stood from the table and shrugged into his coat in the same effort.

They moved in tandem, from their motel room, to the car, onto the road and on their way, but the once-savored feeling of unquestioned accord was gone. Sam wasn't sure when that had left them--it'd been gone before the year they'd spent apart, but he couldn't pinpoint it nor name the exact event in the detritus of their failures and attempts past when it'd happened--and it was resignation not sadness that registered its absence.

Retrospect, a cruel teacher of insight, scolded Sam far too often anymore. Sam hadn't even realized they shared an accord, a sympatico and symmetry, during the years leading to the end of it. He was helpless to get it back, and Dean floundered with the same, but at least they were together again and each kind of alive.

Sam figured if he had to keep pressing on and existing, doing so with Dean's miserable company was favorable to being alone. If he was truthful, the dull disappointment that stung the back of his tongue and the unease threading their companionship wasn't newfound or the complete result of the recent past. It'd been there awhile, for reasons too complicated to pick apart and simple enough to label, box, then carefully set aside and hopefully never intrude into again.

The drive to the Grotesquery was short and silent. Dean got half out of the car, stood there and held onto the door handle with the curl of his hand, paused. 

"How about I take the north end and you the south? We meet in the middle and compare notes."

The north end had the offices and more opportunity to talk to staff and witnesses. The south end was the fairway and passive oddities displays. Divided this way because Dean still didn't trust Sam with witnesses and not to just gank a monster outright, regardless of consequence or inopportune setting, though Dean wasn't ever going to just say that aloud.

"Yeah, sure." Sam didn't protest or pretend not to understand, even agree with, every bit of Dean's suppressed motivations. 

Dean popped the trunk and Sam fished out an EMF reader and a flashlight, nodded once at Dean, then strode away. Sooner started, sooner done.

It was early, fog-bound and thick with gray, and no one else seemed to be here. Sam wondered idly if that many ever would be, regardless of the hour.

He began his work, methodical and precise, started at the western edge of this straggly clump of strange humanity so he could circuit the ends then wind up at the meet point. As usual, he was accompanied by a persistent hum, whispers and jags of sensation and nothing tangible, an undercurrent he was starting to accept would always be with him now, the white noise of ravaged injury and scarred survival.

Sam also began his usual parallel track of thoughts, one on his work, the other a fast-running obsessive tumult that always ended in the same stubborn place and at its way to his very core, the same question that somehow punctuated his entire existence. His closer symmetry with what they hunted and hated and burned than he'd ever had with Dean. His inner demons--literal and otherwise.

Sam replayed what he'd started to remember of the past year, and all that had come before that had informed his abilities to become that. The supposed healing of that breach, the damage incurred, the time after where he'd been _perfectly okay again_. He couldn't reconcile if his actions were those of the purely calculating and pragmatic or if it was all more sinister, yet another manifestation of the intrinsic darkness that he carried in his heart, his blood, like a lodestone.

It was easier to insist without a soul he'd acted and reacted merely unfettered from compassion or conscience--a frightening enough proposition--but Sam remained unsettled to this pat exposition of his lost year. He was still poisoned with demon blood, his pulse still a deeper thrum of some murmuring intangible thing, never banished even when contained.

He believed more that's what had informed his choices, his unmerciful swath of monsters downed or turned for a bigger prize, victims saved or victims as bait all the same to him, the family he'd found and courted wholly to his solitary ends, the blur of miles and states and fucks that passed without meaning.

The fog thinned into a dampening mist, and so far nothing revealed itself as a threat or even passably unusual. Curios such as the twisted skeleton of a newborn, or a ten-pound tangled lump of hair eaten by a compulsively driven woman, or the stretched and tanned skin of interesting historical tattoos weren't much in comparison to what Sam had seen. Were offering no paranormal, inhabited, or cursed threat besides.

Despite its lack of punch, Sam found himself liking this place, this misfit circus, the tents hand-sewn and covered with a patina of care and consideration and embroidered sigils, the boardwalk rough-hewn but without a creak, a carnival in sepia tones and persimmon.

Sam gained the far southeast end and hadn't encountered anyone, nobody even bothering to man the few games and booths in this early dismal weather and lack of crowd. He tilted to stare toward the far horizon, the landscape of prairie that rolled upwards into sandhills, blue and charcoal instead of green under the mantle of banded heavy clouds and mist gathering into a slow rain. He wiped his face with a hand, shoved his palm in his half-open coat and felt the wet soak into his shirt, frowned at the hard-edged shape that caught his peripheral attention.

It was a fortune teller booth, complete with a dessicated and fading mannequin behind the glass, a thin man with a thinly chiseled goatee and thinner fingers wrapped around a crystal ball, his painted eyes and the stone on his turban the only things still vibrant.

Sam almost laughed at it, sat to square at the very last slat, faced back toward the stretch of boardwalk, long grass reaching to tickle its other side from below. A true carnival trick, but nothing strange in that. Practicality more than eerie wonder surrounded it; the booth acted as an effective stopping point and visual barrier, framed the idea of this hodge-podge avenue into a whole.

Twenty-five cents to have a question answered, fifty cents for a question and a wish.

Sam checked it over, found it clean. He dismissed it, started to turn away. The wind whipped and caught the corner of his jacket, and his pocket jangled.

He considered it, reached in and dug out a dollar's worth of spare change. He could use the fleeting diversion of a carnival trick.

The coins were light in his hand and fell heavily, dropped to land in a hidden tray that rang and echoed, empty. Sam pushed the correct button, waited, then something sighed, low and gusty within the booth's innards. Parts stuttered and whirred, flywheels and bellows and cogs. The whole thing lurched and groaned. Music began playing, an insubstantially trilling calliope, and the mannequin fortune teller jerked into motion, twisted abruptly right so its hands surrounded an outsize light bulb.

The bulb was painted over with a giant question mark, flared and flickered, and the music stopped. The fortune teller stared at Sam as the bulb blazed, what's your question. Sam snorted derisively.

"Why don't you name one purely good thing about me, you creepy booth genie. I dare you to try."

He didn't know quite where the question had come from, so fluent and demanding and without hesitation. It shouldn't be surprising to have that bubbling to the forefront given this opportunity to vent into a void that wouldn't be able to name his secrets and doubts.

The bulb blinked, five times successively, then the fortune teller bobbed weirdly and something thunk-snap landed in a narrow slot below the coin exchange. Sam plucked a card into his hand, thick stock with an impressed border and a single word printed in neat, tiny script at its center.

_Brother_

He almost released the card in a hot shock of uncertainty, almost crumpled it in a bitter twist of rage.

Maybe there was something wrong at this carnival after all--maybe it was this booth. But there were no physical indications, no squelching noises from the EMF reader, no scent of sulfur or shiver of cold. Sam wondered if there was a relic hidden in its depths, a holdover legacy that was affecting those who asked it questions. He curled his lip, thinking, what was the worst this dingy box could do to him compared to the life he'd endured?

The music tinnily sounded and more parts spun and wheezed, and everything started grinding into motion. The fortune teller got to the opposite arc of its mechanism, hands enclosing another huge Edison bulb and the filament warmed in a ribbon flutter of orange, this one painted with a lightning bolt.

Sam thought--ask for several million dollars, an all expenses paid vacation, to die comfortably and just be left the fuck alone.

Wishes always came with a price, same as the balance levied when long-sought questions at last were answered. It wouldn't come true, same as _Brother_ written on that card cradled in his palm was some kind of sick coincidence, but disquiet raised his hackles, guts tingling, all the same. He set his jaw, clenched a fist with his free hand, should unplug this thing and set it on fire.

Sam identified the power cord, reached for it. Choked back a sudden dryness, salt on his tongue, almost begged the ether with raw insistence.

"I just want one day where I can actually do something good, just one thing--one decision that's finally right, one way I'm allowed to get something right and good just to do _something good_ that's only right."

His voice clogged, then, and Sam sucked in a sharp breath. His heart thumped against his chest and the roar of blood filled his ears and he had to stop himself from shaking. The imploring, despairing ramble didn't even make sense to him, but that was probably for the best. He'd only get a fortune cookie platitude in answer; giving this genie-whatever thing zero comprehensibility to base a granted wish upon suited him fine.

He ached for it to somehow be given.

Oh, God, he was a mess. A fucking goddamn mess.

The fortune teller stared another moment, and another card dropped into the slot, then the bellows filled and shushed, everything click-clacked to center again. The mannequin sagged around his dusty crystal ball, a final hollow strain of music carried into the prairie on the wind. The whole booth was silent and the lights went out.

Sam retrieved the card.

_Remember_

This time, Sam welled with anger, anger that seethed and boiled, then spilled over. He kicked the booth, punched it, growled something ridiculous like, _what does that even mean?_ He grappled with the booth like he could shake more answers loose, hands slipping and squeaking without purchase and his arms burning from the strain. He squeezed it, almost got it tipped over backwards, but it counter-weighted, thunked forward, rapped his shoulder hard enough to bruise.

Sam collapsed, leaned on the glass and panted, anger like a firecracker, short fuse into a bang then completely spent. He tipped his stung, throbbing hand to his chest, tasted bile, and the mist turned into a fat steady rain.

He stood there awhile, barely breathing, watched raindrops spatter then squiggle down the glass. Nothing happened, of course, and Sam couldn't even muster disappointment.

"Hey! Yo, Sam."

He muttered and quickly pocketed the two cards, replaced them with the EMF reader, made like he'd been scanning the booth. Shuttered his craziness behind mild pretending eyes and casually straightened just in time for Dean to stomp up beside him.

"This end's longer than the north side," Sam offered, practical and placid, before Dean could get a word in edgewise. He tapped the booth with his toes. "Nothing to worry about here. I haven't found anything."

Dean eyed him warily, but not because of this particular exchange or having found him lurking by a fortune teller booth probably a good twenty minutes more than what'd be reasonably necessary to scope out the whole carnival. Dean eyed him warily all the time, now.

"Yeah, agreed. The place is still closed up, on account of the rain, and the owners and workers all seem to check out. They thought I was here to do some more crap reporting on them, but I said I wanted to write something glowing about it in my quirky travel blog, and after that they admitted they've been hounded by some fundies who think they're weirdos and should hide from decent society or something." 

Dean cast his wariness at the booth next, narrowed his eyes, then he laughed. "Hey, like in _Big_ , right?" He rolled his eyes. 

"Whatever. I think the reports are false, just some mundanes with their panties in a bunch that people exist in the same world as them who have dermal piercings and do unpleasantly consensual things with snakes in a live act and," he flapped his hands vaguely, "other stuff."

Sam's eyebrows shot up. "And you know about this snake act how?"

Dean almost didn't flush. "Ahhh--let's just say I interrupted a rehearsal. Anyway, if you're done with Mesmero Zoltar there, I think we can head out and call this one a bust."

It was too bad. Sam would gladly have traded their current stasis of uneasy superficiality with shared purpose, however temporary.

"Sure." Sam nodded, forced himself into a rolling jerk away from the booth, fell in following Dean to the car. "I mean yeah, I'm getting the same sense. Nothing going on here and never was."

Everything was laden and barbed and twisted, self-parody, and no matter where they were or what was said it all seemed to carry a sadness. A harbinger or reflecting double-meaning. It didn't matter what they discussed and how banal or sublime. Made Sam regret what he'd said, rethink what Dean told him.

The drive to the motel was fine. Their wrap-up discussion of the freakshow carnival was fine. Their filling the day into evening with beer and pleasantries and the decision about where to go next was fine. Because that's where they lived, some amorphous uncertain place known as _fine_ , the rock they stood on all that kept them from drowning.

Painfully enough, it was a comfort. Being fine at least meant Dean wasn't in Hell, or dead, or living under a thread that'd already been cut. It meant Sam wasn't completely psycho, or socio, in Hell or dead.

There wasn't a word to contain what that kind of comparison made possible to tolerate, while the toleration simultaneously wore at and ground away the most sacred parts of what they still had.

Sam sat on a bed with the blankets still turned down from last night's attempt, watched Dean get into the other bed without a goodnight, both pretending he wasn't still so fucked up about sleep and damn near everything else.

He lay down and stared into the watery dark, closed his eyes but wouldn't rest. Remembered years ago, the warm security when he and Dean were made to share a bed, how he'd never minded that requirement of their lives. Thought in one of the few convictions he had left that Dean had never minded that part either.

A memory of being fourteen and brazen flashed over Sam, something he hadn't allowed himself to revisit in forever, when he'd insinuated into Dean's arms and woke Dean with an attempted kiss. The ghost-sensation muscle memory of Dean kissing him back. The way he'd learned to savagely compartmentalize memories and thoughts after Dean had woken fully then refused, rebuked, him.

He remembered the years after and how they always circled around and back to that point but never spoke of it, how they'd watched one another, veiled and anticipatory despite, and it never again happened. In a cut of bitingly black humor, Sam had chalked it up to being a bit like Hell, definitely no Heaven, nowhere that would actually keep them, but somehow just as inevitable. The mark of it on them, the core-deep carried stench, how they'd never talk about it and compare notes and move on, simply pretend they had.

They'll dance around these things unresolved--each other, unrequited--for the rest of their lives. But at least they were _fine_.

* * *

Sam lay in half-waking dream state, dozed while being aware of the early hour and quietness of the world outside their room. He guessed it was three, pried an eye open enough to check the clock on the bedside table, but it wasn't there. That confused but didn't worry him, still too cosseted in comfortable sleepiness and warmth to really care, but he'd done just enough to bother Dean into stirring, smiled and hummed a reassuring noise at the hand that pressed to the small of his back in similarly muzzy, unspoken question.

Dean patted him and got heavier, stolen back into sleep easy and quick once knowing Sam was okay. With that heaviness Dean's arm slid across Sam's waist, slotted them closer, and Sam thought he was going to enjoy their last two hours, laying like this, until Dad woke them.

Sam blanched cold then broke out in a fevered sweat. He groped for an escape, arms tucked under his pillow and his body tucked too near, far too near, to Dean, tugged and fought with the blankets until he found an end. He swung a leg out to slide away, to _get away_ , before Dean woke back up and realized that he'd been on some weird regressive sleepwalk, somehow miscalculated and the floor was bizarrely further down than the reach of his curled toes.

It sent him tumbling off the bed entirely, hard and ungainly knock of his knee sharp to concrete barely softened with thin carpet, his elbow knocking equally hard after. Sam's limbs didn't work like they should, gangly and unfamiliar even though they were his, and he flailed then faceplanted, still tangled in the blankets and taking most of them off the bed with him.

He didn't surrender to laying there in a stupid heap, fought with the sheet knotted impossibly around him, teetered on his hip, then his butt, as he clawed ineffectually at everything, got nowhere.

"Sammy?" Dean slid off the bed, too, landed next to Sam, found and planted a hand on Sam's chest then he paused, leaned and snapped on the light affixed to the wall aggravatingly so low its spill didn't even reach the bed.

They blinked and squinted, and Sam was a bewildered wreck, all akimbo and breathless, heart racing and afraid.

Dean dealt with it, simply and effectively and big brother usual, knocked Sam's legs together then righted Sam to sitting, spun Sam so they faced each other. His eyes were thick with tired but he was fully alert, at the ready to fight or flee, cupped Sam's neck with a hand.

"Hey there, kiddo. You okay?" He laughed low, started to gently untangle them. "I'm thinking nightmare here, right? That or you really gotta piss and we're both about to be in trouble."

Sam's entire being was arrested, so elementally he couldn't even register surprise or disbelief. He could only manage staring, was numb and nerve-splitting, gaping at Dean.

Dean who was beautiful, green eyes unshadowed with lies and agonies and doubts, cheeks freckled like they'd gotten in summers long past when they'd have a few days, even weeks, to themselves in the sun and heat. Dean who was looking at him in that mix of amused affection and protective concern not yet dimmed by disappointments and tragedy. Dean who touched him without hesitation or self-conscious hindrance of motive and intent and denial.

Sam swallowed and stammered silently but couldn't speak. He fisted his hands to find where they were, grabbed out and clung to Dean's t-shirt, burrowed in to clutch shamelessly. He scratched his cheek on Dean's amulet, no-big-deal hanging there, sucked back a tight sob before it could fully form.

Dean didn't push him away.

"Dean," he whispered, rolled his forehead to Dean's neck. Drew in a breath, another, a third, deep and aching and he had no idea what was happening or why, but he couldn't leave this, not quite yet. In a moment, he'd push and pull and interrogate this riddle, figure this out. In a moment.

"Sure, bud. Take two." Dean soothed Sam's back with long, confident sweeps of his hand, leaned against the bed and Sam into him.

After awhile, Dean starting them moving again, sounded reluctant when he said, "Okay well, now I've gotta pee for real. Better lemme go, unless you're into that kind of thing."

Teasing, actual teasing, and about something that skirted close to _that_. That thing they never talked about or acknowledged and would never again bring up around the other if not in relation to someone far, far else. But Dean was relaxed and without awkwardness or affectation, and it wasn't a cruel attempt to squash this intimacy or further degrade a moment Sam had already ruined.

It made Sam feel brazen again, this unknown spacetime where Dean's tone and gaze and manner were eloquently simple, made him loose and reckless enough to tease back.

"Hey, maybe I am." Sam tensed, started digging in his mind for the correct walls and the lead-lined hex-tripped lockbox this was supposed to fit into and the stacks of things that went in front and both sides to shield it from even his own thoughts.

Dean barked a short, happily unsuspecting laugh. "I knew I shouldn't have let you help me finish Dad's beer last night." He got free, used Sam's shoulder as a handhold boost, gave it a shake and snickered. "Freak."

Sam listened as Dean moved around, the room under the weak glow of the one light and coming dawn not as he remembered staring into last night, listened to Dean pee and wash up. He was exhausted. His wild swinging jerks this way, that, since waking had taken their toll. The warring mix of euphoria and adrenaline and fear--it was like being on a carnival ride.

Dean returned without stalling. They got him levered standing, shucked from the blankets, and Dean scowled at him, tightened the hand gripping his wrist.

"What?" Sam remembered Dean asking him that, yesterday, answering _nothing_ as if it were, even though Dean had heard the cram and rush and dissolution behind the word.

Dean shook his head, let go, started to remake the bed. "You're almost as tall as me and I'm pretending you won't get taller." He unfurled the top sheet, let the comforter drift atop, turned down an end and crawled back in. "C'mon. We can sleep until eight or something, make up for your interrupting my beauty rest."

Sam waited. To know what was going on, what had happened, what had changed. For things to go back to normal, back to _fine_ , and maybe this other Dean was right but this was the nightmare somehow. He shook his head and his face crumpled with confusion.

"Sam?"

"Where are we?" he asked, plaintive and revealing, finally willing to admit he had no idea what was going on.

They had been in one bed and he was still shorter than Dean. The other bed made but rumpled, suggested recent use, suggested the shape of Dad and Dad's particularity of sleeping on one side and lining up weapons on the other. A motel room, bland and ugly, but not the same bland and ugly motel room he'd returned to last night. Dean and he in one bed and seemingly nothing wrong, except him standing here knowing everything was wrong.

"Flagstaff." Dean didn't tease, didn't say anything about overindulging on beer or nightmare holdovers. He started to get back up, definitely worried, hips and arm moving in such a way to penetrate Sam with jarringly vivid awareness in realtime and memory.

It'd been Flagstaff. This room and Dad's beer the night before, them sitting wonderfully comfortably too close on this bed and its peach-pink duvet with the one broad turquoise stripe. Dean's arm falling around Sam's waist, so heavy and warm and perfect. This place, but if immediately rewound it went differently, where Sam, half-awake and sometime around three am had been brave and desiring and unguarded enough to kiss Dean. Dean's rejection. Then after, in this room on this bed, how he'd waited for Dean to fall back asleep, then he'd gone.

Run away--taken his already packed duffel because later today they had to check out, money spent, were supposed to go to the bus station and wait for Dad to get them. Instead he'd thought he'd solve everything, for him and for Dean, and just leave. Leave, never come back, never bother or resist or do anything to or with his poor awful horrible brother again, full of anger and recriminations and dizzyingly raw betrayal and hurt.

It hadn't worked, of course. He'd been only fourteen--a fourteen different from most others, skilled and tough and resourceful, but fourteen and penniless all the same--and Dean had outlasted him in Flagstaff.

That was the second time he'd done something Dean would never quite forgive. The first had been his disastrous kiss. This day--this place--it was the last time Dean's trust in him would be whole.

Sam looked at Dean and thought, unbidden, _Brother._ He bounced his gaze from the bed to the floor to his pack. _Remember_.

He remembered. Then, yesterday, his question and his wish. But this was no answer, no magic wand grant. 

But he remembered more, more than he could have known when he was young and more than he let himself see now that he was so weary. 

Sam had read rightly that Dean had wanted the kiss, but he'd stopped listening after that, didn't look past his own demands. In this duality he was afforded greater insight, all they'd lost and been through and ways he'd learned Dean in the years that followed superimposed, telescoping with their depth of imbrication.

The fear behind Dean's sternness that they wouldn't, shouldn't, never-would-again touch like that, kiss, anything beyond. Dean's uncertainties and self-loathing shuttered by Sam's own turmoil. Most starkly in Dean, fear that if it was taken, accepted, too soon it'd be ruined, discovered, taken away.

All Dean wanted from life was to take care of him and please their father. Sam had threatened their balance, the status quo, but it wasn't that straightforward. Sam's kiss had awakened what Dean had compartmentalized for so long--boxes and walls and parts to match Sam's--forced Dean to choose what, in that moment, seemed the only viable option.

Sam had been young, selfish because he'd never been told no by Dean when it was something he most wanted, but Dean hadn't really been any older.

No wonder Dean had yelled, so angrily. Cut him down so unforgivably. Begged him, beneath stern orders and harsh words, to just get back in bed and let things be like they always were.

When he shook himself loose of the strange premonitory wisdom seeing through the past, he found Dean watching him, pensive and anxious and ready to intercede, clearly having no clue what to ask about or how to help. It was the only discomfort Dean had revealed feeling between them.

"I--" Sam just prevented himself saying _I'm sorry, so sorry._ He licked his lips and shuffled ineffectually, didn't have to pretend he was more than a little out of his head. "Is it okay if we leave the light on? I remember now, I'm okay--just." 

"Sure. The light's fine." Dean accepted it mildly--purposefully mildly--and settled in, raised the blankets with the lift of his arm indicating that Sam join him. "You know I sleep through anything."

Sam didn't point out how this very exchange disproved that, entirely. Dean grinned and tucked into the bed, facing Sam, and Sam carefully set himself under the covers alongside. 

He hummed a sardonic laugh. "So long as it's fine."

Dean peered one eye at him, like, what is even your damage and why so dark, weirdo boy? Forgave him instantly because he was Sam, little brother, too early aged and too early awake after a nightmare, feathered fingertips to rest, warm and solid, touching Sam's leg.

It buzzed, tingled, and Sam was momentarily giddy and fourteen and crushing on his older brother again. He traced the line of Dean's forefinger with his fingertip, belly tightening when Dean blushed.

He'd been right about wanting that kiss, the both of them, but not a terrible person for taking it. Just a kid, one slip of defenses and desperately in love with the center of his universe, who just happened to have the colossal hang-up of believing him sacred.

Sam scooted further down, took in everything of this younger Dean that he could as he lay waiting, even the sound of Dean's light snoring breath like a homecoming he'd been denied and yearning far longer than he'd ever known.

Eventually he sighed, pried his attentions elsewhere. He couldn't simply stay here, but he didn't want to deal with trying to explain this to Dean. He needed to search for clues, figure this out, leave if he must.

"Dean?" he tested, soft on a whisper, and Dean didn't react.

Sam slid from the bed again--this time knowing his limits and his limbs--and walked around the room checking for anything revealing. A cold spot, an area that warped or twisted in and out of permanence, the solidity of the walls and the connection of his grounding to this place. He glanced at their bags, went to get his EMF reader.

He crouched over his duffel and opened it, dug around in the correct pocket, cut his thumb on the corner of something thin and sharp. Sam hissed and drew back, instinctively sucked at his thumb, then with his other hand pried loose whatever had bitten him.

Two cards, thick stock with an impressed border, the word _Brother_ , the word _Remember_ , printed in neat, tiny script at their centers.

Sam bared his teeth at them, shocked they'd be here, angry at their implacable taunting. They were the only things in this past redo that were unexpected, off. He held them with measuring consideration, still couldn't destroy or mar either, shoved them back into his bag.

In another pocket he found pens and a barely used notebook. It was the kind he'd taken a fancy to during these years, bought if they spied one at the dollar store or the thrift shop, half-page sized and fabric-bound, kept snug shut by an elastic strap affixed to the back cover.

He stared at the journal, checked on Dean still asleep, pinched it and his favorite fine-point black pen in his hand.

Sam stilled before zipping his bag back up, stared at the neatly packed entirety of his life's important possessions, books and granola bars, clothes and a utility knife, the cheap black cord necklace Dean had given him after being won from a coin-and-crank prize machine next to the gumballs. Everything he'd taken away from here and Dean's scorn, everything he'd thought he'd need to survive their being apart.

He caught a fragile whelm of conflict from escaping his chest, nostalgia and fond sadness for who he'd been, how simplistic even for knowing about all ilk of monster and manner to slay them.

Sam told himself to get dressed and leave, see if the parking lot or gravel excuse for the yard or the road leading to this motel was real. Ran out of the energy to run, right then, didn't want to run. Wanted to just get back into bed and be left alone with Dean for awhile. So that's what he did.

He opened the journal and wrote down the two words given to him on those cards, giving each an entire page, one facing the other, left the rest blank. Then he wrote out everything he could recall about yesterday--him and Dean, the carnival, the fortune teller booth, where they'd been and where they were headed next. He described waking here, thinking it was a trick or a test, but didn't know how or of what.

He wrote out plays on the words, possible double-meanings, lore that might relate.

Sam wrote until he got too tired and gritty-eyed to see, let the journal drift from his hand, rolled close to Dean and fell asleep.

* * *

Sam woke the next morning still in Flagstaff, still fourteen. He lay for a time, Dean in the shower and a quick survey revealing they were all ready to go save for being dressed, planned what to do.

He'd go along with this, use Dad's requirements to scan for possible hunts and be always on the lookout for helpful research to find out about the fortune teller booth. See if there was a way to get back, if he was trapped, if this was real or a figment twisted in mockery of a learning opportunity.

"Sammy... Sammy!" Dean yelled in that early morning wake up sing-song he did, and Sam hated, poked from the open bathroom door. He walked to the bed, grinned down at Sam past the towel he was using to scrub-dry his hair. "C'mon, I let you sleep in but now we gotta move. We have to boogie--it's a two-mile walk to the bus station."

Sam groaned and sat up, batted at Dean to get out of the way. Dean helped him up then harassed his progress to the bathroom.

"Dean," he warned. "I am ready, just gimmie a minute." He was, actually, outright and no hesitation known, no warring of wanting his own space and his own way.

After last night, his memories of tomorrow were already faded. They weren't as glaring or rife with detail and sureness. Sam decided to stay with Dean for today, see where this led him, what he could find out. He looked at himself in the dingy, water-spotted mirror over the sink and nodded, mind made.

With that, his memories of living on his own those two weeks were replayed a final time then they blipped out, were gone. Finding and adopting and naming Bones, the adventure of it, his fear and hunger, his impotent tears of rejection and frustrated rage. His being found. Dean's wounded faith at his betrayal, Dad's cold disappointment with them both and barely restrained temper.

Sam couldn't chase them down when he tried, even having a second ago known with certainty everything about them, that they'd been real, that he'd lived those weeks and emotions.

He floundered, whapped both hands on the bathroom doorframe, whirled back around. Stark contrast to his sleepy, stumbly grumpiness directly before. He searched for anything, nothing known to solve this, and not like the memories-now-gone would be hovering like wisps then flicker out for him to see.

Dean was working jeans and a t-shirt around over still wet skin, cocked his head and studied Sam, the worry from last night creeping back in behind his eyes.

"You alright there, Sammy?"

Sam knew where they'd go next--he was certain of it. Even without the two weeks there was still a nasty poltergeist in Jefferson, Idaho, that Dad would have found.

He was sure that wouldn't change, even though two important things had, but not truly fairly by his forceful reckoning. The kiss undone because of Sam's waking to that moment unknowing where he was, actively undoing the deed and its attendant fallout but without active choice. He hadn't run away but in a sense right now he was on a hunt; there'd be no leaving until he resolved this and set the clock right again.

Today flipped into tomorrow, into next week, into months. Sam hadn't found any reason to believe this here wasn't real, hadn't discovered a trick or Trickster. He hadn't tracked down the fortune teller booth, no lore or even mention of it, and the Grotesquery was years from even being conceived.

He wrote, obsessively and endlessly, filled the first journal in a matter of days, bought a dozen more and kept going.

Exhaustive lists of people. Who to trust. Who to kind-of trust. Who to let do things for you but not in a bargain or agreement. Who to kill on sight.

Never make a deal--never, never--make Dean swear to the same.

Find Elkins. Secure the Colt. It can destroy almost anything, including the world, thanks to its being a hellmouth key. Forget about any special knives, Heaven is a lie, demon blood demon blood demon blood.

Descriptions of places. Types of ghouls and threats and things they hadn't ever encountered. Be on the lookout for this, for that, the heavily underlined phrase _don't let Dean run into the basement in Nebraska to kill that rawhead_.

Things more sinister, squirmy and discomfiting and awful, perhaps no way to be avoided. These had to be told in more than lists and bullet points. He wound up writing stories, thousands of words, to encompass the devastation wrought by the yellow-eyed demon, the angels and their war fallen to earth, the rise of Lucifer and Death and everything after.

Bobby had been the first name Sam had written in his list of _reliable_ contacts. The list was short. He'd sent Bobby a letter, false in explaining how he'd learned of this past connection, not at all misleading in wanting to again have it in their lives. Bobby had welcomed the overture, and they'd both agreed not to bother Dad with the details of it, just yet.

Apart from the writing he just went along, liked the familiar comfort of him, Dean and Dad, in rundown places to sleep between the car and the road. He was, almost disbelievingly, happy. Dad was happy with his change in attitude and apparent enthusiasm for the hunt. Dean was happy because they were happy.

Sam's memories were not infallible, weren't some bizarre gospel told in chapters and books of places-been, yet to be. They were parables, warnings, a guidebook. He remembered buildings but not specific rooms, cities without quite being able to navigate their streets, how to kill monsters without surety of when they'd strike.

He found himself missing the internet, powerfully reliable cellphones, places he figured they might never return. He didn't miss the distance between he and Dean, their deceits and duplicity at turns, the cost of their very selves to that past-and-future life.

Before he knew it Sam was into fifteen, their usual routine then summer hit, hot and humid and every hunt seemed to take them deeper south. Dad had found a rundown cottage on a mosquito-infested inlet fed by upstream runoff and the Gulf. Sam was fascinated by the meeting of salt and fresh water, the brackish estuary, one clear layer floating completely separate from the muddy striation below.

Fifteen going on twice that, but fifteen in so many ways still. It's as if he aged and regressed in tandem. Sam warred with it, would sometimes gracelessly shove and yank pieces trying to get them to fit, other times slid fluid and unquestioning between remembering who he'd once been and forgetting to be anything other than who he was here. His emotions were a confusing jumble, oscillating from tired pragmatism of a man greatly aged by life to a too-smart teen certain in knowing what life was going to be all about.

He did remember his future, still, but the memories were softer, no longer tangible and tactile held in his thoughts. Instead they were like waking from a vivid dream, flashes in clarity of sensation, people and place, the whole lost to abstraction. He had moments of such cognitive dissonance even Dad noticed, asked if he was all right.

Sam experienced things that hadn't happened before. The mundanities and dailiness could be happening again exactly as before, but these things he didn't remember, couldn't predict or catalog, couldn't check-mark off as they occurred. He was learning from his mistakes--prescient and newfound--had learned there was a lot to be said for living in the now.

He hadn't unearthed any given reason why he'd been sent back. Couldn't comprehend or find a cause nor a solution. This--journey--it hadn't been revelatory, hadn't been without its lessons. He liked being here, and not solely in simplistic contrast to where he'd been.

Sam knew he was dangerously too comfortable, too content, with his current situation. He and Dean, doing so well together, he and Dad, disagreeing more than fighting hammer and tong.

It scared him, feeling this way, because eventually it'd be taken. Sam felt that with the surety of having no other experience. Everything, eventually, got taken away. He was still here, but that didn't mean it would last. He still hadn't made whatever decision or progress on what his wish might have meant to then get him back to his own time, but one day he would without even realizing it, and the next day he'd wake again in his future.

Miserable, _fine_ , but maybe something good about things changed. That was why he was here, after all, even if he couldn't pinpoint or discern what being given this time to redo meant.

He and Dean were on the cottage's back porch, screened-in and small, but breezy. The saving grace to this week's temporary home. Dean dozed in a creaky hammock and Sam had his journal, wasn't writing, fiddled the pen and doodles but couldn't think of what concretely to say. 

It'd been over a year. It'd been a good year.

Sam watched the dance of the setting sun on the water, tide going out to reveal the leggy stems of tall-grown grass and cattails. A heron poked around, high-stepping and arch, scoured the newly exposed mud and plants of algae and the occasional snail.

It was on Sam's mind to tell Dean something, share a version of what was happening to him, what would keep happening, try to dim the inchoate worry that had taken hold of Dean and smoldered under the surface before it flash-flared into more. 

What Sam had to say might worry Dean just as much, but at least it'd be clearly defined, and Dean preferred clearly defined. To him that meant there could be answers, action, something to be done.

Sam wanted, most of all, to do this differently. To outright tell instead of conceal and foolishly believe it could be kept hidden, that it was somehow better for everyone, would spare Dean instead of make it worse in the long run.

He'd tried that, too many times. It never worked, same as all his best intentions.

"Dean?" Sam fidgeted, and something about his tone and manner made Dean sit up and put a foot out, turn and face him fully.

The irony of being so tired of lies and hiding that he'd decided to tell Dean what was happening to him were visions didn't escape Sam. But he had no better explanation for it, and all things given and all things possible to offer as proof then reasons, visions were good as anything. Sam also knew he'd likely get visions eventually. Real ones. Might as well lay the groundwork, get started on dealing with them now.

"I think I know stuff, all this--" he held up his journal, "because of, visions, I guess you could call them."

Dean frowned, grappled the hammock then tipped out, bare feet silent on the porch's warped deck slats. He lowered onto the long swing next to Sam, a porch swing that wouldn't budge because it'd rusted fast in place, chains rigid and stubborn, looked back and forth between Sam's apprehensive gaze and the journal.

"Okay," Dean said carefully, looked suspicious.

Sam prickled cold then flushed with smothering heat, feared this was the beginning of the end and he'd ruined everything. This, here, the wish, wherever he'd be banished after. When Dean raised a hand Sam flinched.

"Hey, hey, no." Dean sounded pained, opened his hand wide in an appeasing fan but didn't retreat, reached slow and sure and cupped Sam's neck with a gentle hold. "Gimmie a minute to process, Sammy. You just told me you're having visions--I think that earns me at least a little delayed reaction time."

Sam let out a tight breath. "I haven't told you before but it's been awhile since they started, and it's more than lucky research and hunches and gut instinct, it's, I'm a freakazoid and--"

"Flagstaff." Dean smiled, rubbed his thumb along Sam's jaw, soothed and stilled Sam's ramble. "Gotta be. You fell out of bed that morning and haven't been the same since."

Sam scowled but Dean laughed, rolled his eyes.

"Quit assuming the worst, dorkface. I don't mean that in a bad way."

"You're not mad?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe you thought they'd go away. Maybe you didn't believe what was happening was something like visions or whatever. Maybe getting mad would feel good but it wouldn't help anything--" he glanced towards the half-open door, the sound of the CB radio crackling and Dad in there, researching something, "especially not with you two always spitting like cats at each other."

Especially not how Dad can get about these things, even if it's you, left unsaid.

Sam nodded slowly and his ears rang. His pulse had sped like he'd been spooked into a too-long sprint, he'd paled then broken out in flopsweat, and his nerves trembled.

"I've researched it, everything I can think of, but I don't know why. I don't know why it happened or how to get back where they'd stop." Sam's voice was thready, miserable, but he hadn't meant to sound that way.

It was the truth, at the heart of it all.

Dean breathed in, long and slow, leaned closer to Sam. "Do they hurt you?"

Sam tilted, surprised at the question, and the fiercely protective glint in Dean's eyes, the set of his body as if ready to strike, made Sam suddenly smile.

"No. At least, not yet."

"Good. Still weird, but good." Dean hummed thoughtfully, absently stroked Sam's hair. "You'll tell me if they do," he ordered, but it was a being-told-what-to-do that Sam didn't mind. Dean smirked, catching the corner of his mouth, made Sam's toes curl. "They are kinda useful, so as long as it isn't a threat or some curse or crazy brain tampering, for now we can research more. See what happens. "

Sam found himself nodding, overwhelmed with relief, and without his being fully aware he lost other memories to the moment, that decisive exchange.

He licked his lips, stared at Dean, blurted out, "If I kissed you would it ruin everything?"

Dean blushed, dark crimson stain that clouded his skin, hairline to collarbone. He stuttered, said, "Yes. Probably." Then he swallowed harshly, tightened the hand still holding Sam's head, achingly vulnerable and bare. "At least, that's what I've told myself, every time I've wondered, for too long now."

Sam blushed to match, flutter in his belly and limbs--rain on parched land, the miracle spring that burst from the earth in answer to every prayer. He didn't know really what to say, too amazed and disconcerted by Dean's admission for eloquence or making light or profundity. His turn finally to reassure.

He decided to keep on. No longer reckless, only absolutely wanting. Steady in certainty.

"It won't," Sam promised, pleaded. "God, Dean, I swear it won't." Sam's hands flexed and his body twisted, sought Dean's acceptance and permission and touch.

Dean groaned, showed his teeth in a last gesture of fight and resistance, but when Sam's needy hands grabbed onto him, sweet and demanding, there was at last surrender.

Sam widened his eyes, wanted to see Dean better, wanted to take this in and commit to every moment. He was only fifteen again, mostly green and terribly untried, and he and Dean had never done anything here, and never more in Sam's knowing than that one bitter, abortive kiss.

"Fuck, Sammy--c'mere, c'mere."

Sam trembled when Dean's mouth covered his, missed with the greedy haste of his own press, lips smearing Dean's cheek while his hips rounded and twitched.

Dean steadied him, arm going around his waist and a hand behind his head, low shushing then their breathing synched and heartbeats matched and they kissed.

They kissed the air out of each other, their very breaths, hands scatter-shot and legs tangling, Dean leaned into the corner of the swing and Sam climbing him impatiently, knees knocking the armrest and his movements restless and nerve-sprung, until Dean's hands slid up his thighs, settled him to straddle Dean's lap.

Dean touched Sam everywhere, hands broad and strong, hot and sweaty, removing Sam's shirt. Fingertips trailing reverently over Sam's brow, nose, tickling behind his ear. Confident and crazy-making shoved into Sam's cut-off jeans, palming his ass, knuckles just grazing his throbbing dick.

He rocked into Dean, against the fiery line of Dean's cock, hard and trapped between them. Sam wanted to strip them, fuck, figure out everything they'd never done together right in this very moment, all of it at once, then all of it again languidly stretched out.

"Dean?"

Dad's call rumbled from just inside. The effect was shattering, cold water poured over their rising heat. Sam squeaked and tried to bolt but Dean clamped them closer, hissed a staying, warning noise into his ear.

The sun had gone down, stars gathering over the water as remnants of the day showed their weak, icy blue last. It was bright inside the cottage by contrast, no light spilling out to find them, show them. Twilight would conceal them.

"Yeap," Dean answered, gruff and hoarse, a gravelly purr that made Sam shudder. "Sssht," Dean reminded, but he grinned, hand soft and lazy in Sam's hair.

"I'm running to town--we're out of coffee and bread. You boys get in here and start on some dinner, then do inventory. We'll eat when I get back." Dad peered out the door, sketched a wave into the darkness.

Inventory meant they'd also be leaving soon.

Dad didn't quite wait for Dean's, "Yes sir!"

They sat for a few minutes longer, lingering unwillingness to let go, savored the feel of being together, like this. Calmed from the bloodhaze buzz and arousal that couldn't find its end now, but wouldn't end here.

When they moved apart it wasn't awkward, there weren't apologies or takeback, and Sam wasn't ashamed of grabbing back hold of Dean, stealing a last kiss before they went inside. The swing chains pulled, sounded like a low piano wire clunked by a hammer, and the wind picked up to rattle the porch and shutters.

Dean shouldered Sam towards their stack of gear in the living room, headed into the kitchen. Sam smiled, brimmed over with giddy, unnameable things, peeked at Dean to find Dean grinning and peeking back at him.

It was extraordinarily easy to forget his future, in moments like these. There was no future but these moments.

Sam got out the masterlist, counted ammo, the cheap smelting silver they bought in spindly coils, bundles of herbs and blessed candles and containers of holy water. He did a cursory thumb-through of their weapons then moved onto the survival gear. Sam used to resent this chore, but over this past year, unspooling slowly unbelievably already a year, he'd come to appreciate its continuity, its reliable rhythm, the security found in knowing they were set for another day, another hunt.

He hummed as he counted MREs, laughed when a damp washcloth smacked his arm, caught it before it hit the ground and threw it underhand, straight and unerring to bop Dean in the forehead.

Dean let it fall, slowly rubbed his lips with two fingers, and Sam stared, couldn't not lick his own lips and shiver. When Dean gave an exaggerated wink, he waved off and went back to his task.

He finished with his own pack, enough t-shirts to have a different one each day of the week, relatively new underwear, jeans and cargo pants and sweats. Socks traveled, only a few specific pair jealously guarded by each of them; Sam preferred the ones with elastic to hold them snug at the bridge, otherwise his too-long feet stretched and misshaped socks during the wear of the day. He was growing out of his only coat, wanted another hoodie.

Sam uncoiled from the floor, darted onto the porch, got his forgotten journal. He knelt down, was compelled to open it, look at a page or three before tucking it away. For the first time he looked at _her_ name, let himself read the so careful and precise page, and for the first time it didn't hurt.

He could remember writing this page. How he'd put her name in neat, tender script towards the bottom margin, had tried to shield and protect her with the build of facts, place, events in a tomb-like build of letters and words over and around her.

Sam had run and hidden away to create this page, sentry this memory. Had sobbed after, wrung dry and wrenched deep with emotion, the information and her memory torn from him in an unforgivable rush. He'd been resolute to avoid her at all costs in this life, spare her. There would always be something taken from them, dreams shattered, chances ruined. That was the Winchester life, no matter when it was lived.

So instead he'd vowed the sacrifice would be his loss only, not her taken, either way still gone. Inevitably no other solution gone. At least this way--gone but out there, living, unbeknownst and whole.

He remembered that maelstrom of emotions, no longer felt them or held them in his memory. Her name passed through him, echoed sadness and wistful affection, but reading _Jessica Moore_ no longer filled him with hollow agony and raging despair.

Relief, then guilt, assailed him--one blossoming and hastening the other--passed just as quickly. He'd earned her reprieve, in so many ways, and even when still full with memory he'd no longer yearned for her and what she represented.

Sam would never meet her, this again time lived, and as he snapped the pocket where his journal took pride of place, his mourning for that was gone.

Dad returned with day-old pecan pie and the news they'd be leaving in the morning. Rental rates would go up starting tomorrow--more per week as they jagged into the summer peak--and there might be a poltergeist in an abandoned chapel forgotten to the Badlands, besides.

Dinner was whatever they'd had left, Dean scraping the cupboards, had managed a noodle casserole of no set distinction that wasn't hard to eat. Dad made calculations for the cash they had left and the miles in gas to get all the way up to South Dakota while he and Dean played footsie under the table.

They went to bed early. Waking to hit the road by three made nine o'clock seem late. Sam slept soundly, facing Dean, their hands knotted and hidden under blankets.

Sam found they hid a lot, thereafter, always risking as far as they could under Dad's nose. Dad loosened attention on them, trusted their care to Dean, also swayed by Sam's continuing attitude adjustment and a sudden zeal for runs and training and research binges.

Nonesuch, of course. Runs were sprints to whatever distance would be enough away so no one could see, then he and Dean would be all over each other, handjobs and blowjobs and hours of heady, glorious necking. Training, exactly the same, thin excuse to divine and explore and learn everything about the other--but they came home breathless and pink-cheeked as expected, cover maintained. Research was teasing in the library, in the back room, until Dad passed out in front of the tv and they were, for all intents, alone.

The first time they're on their own for more than a run of several days it wasn't sex on Sam's mind. He dragged Dean to a tattoo shop that asked for cash and not his age, somewhere in Oklahoma City and behind a dry cleaners. Showed the crude drawing in his journal of the anti-possession mark, its ugly thick lines and strange shape that would make on them its dark stain, dark purpose.

Dean hadn't questioned it--had admitted to maybe even finding the idea of them sharing a mark, a unique brand, as hot. Said hot, Sam heard romantic and fated and other flourishing words, knew he'd heard correctly. The tattooist had been efficient, unconcerned, and they'd healed soaking in crammed baths and arctic air-conditioning after a visit to the library to get everything that looked good to Sam to read and Dean to watch.

When Dad had retrieved them, it'd been one of the few newly forged things between them they hadn't bothered to hide. Sam had explained it, again cited research and findings and precautions for their future. He'd tried to persuade Dad into getting one, got an arch brow and sharper retort for the effort. 

Sam couldn't be roused to argue it further or mind. Dean was safe. That was enough.

After that they went back into hiding, into mutual absorption, and Sam reread the passages he'd furiously written about possessions, demons, when and how it could happen, to remind himself they could. Added more of anything he could remember, demons and otherwise.

On his sixteenth birthday, Sam had decided he wanted to be at Bobby's so he could get a for-real driver's license, one with a stable address to offset the six-some illegal others they kept in an accordion file in the trunk. 

He'd talked Dad into going. It was prickly, tense. Then Dad had talked Bobby through a deal in some backyard low-muttered trade for a rumblingly huge pick-up truck. Took them all out for a generously laden pancakes and eggs and bacon breakfast. Dad had left before dinner, told Dean to keep the Impala in good order, keep Sammy safe, had told Sam to listen to his brother and keep making us proud.

Bobby had made a lopsided cake and chopped a carton of ice cream into thirds. Dean had gotten him drunk that night, made him laugh and made him happy, then secreted them to their room and done a whole lot more.

Three days into sixteen and Sam had sent away the GED test he'd filled out awhile ago then had just held onto, not quite certain or ready to turn his back on somehow finishing school, continuing on.

He went to the post office alone on his break, Dean doing odd work at the ubiquitous garage and Sam bussing tables for the while. Stood in the small, tidy lobby, perplexed the clerk because he was the only one in there. 

Sam had held the big envelope, thought it over, thought it again. With him and Dean trusted to be on their own, a car all theirs and the world to hunt and explore, he knew finishing high school wasn't just unlikely, it'd be near impossible. He also understood from painful memory what college would bring. 

Another sacrifice made, one way or another. He grieved for this chance given up before even attempted, a once-cherished dream traded, barter for past sins not yet dealt. But he had different hopes for the future, this future, a different fit, and he was different too. It didn't hurt as much, this time around, thinking about never doing anything but this life.

Finally, Sam walked to the counter, sent the test certified mail, return address: Bobby's place. When the clerk had cancelled the just-added stamps Sam blinked, sensation washing over him like the prickling quiet that follows a storm. He'd searched around his mind, realized all active memory of schooling, Stanford, the terrible and wonderful knotting of ambitions and the arguments and rifts and happiness in success, the numbing pain, had gone silent.

The next time he and Dean had swung by their post office box--some four months later, the test not foremost in his thoughts--there'd been a card for Sam.

_Congrats, you're now eligible for a dead-end job. Flying colors, kid. Look surprised._

He'd been glad to have it, felt edified somehow, didn't really care about it thereafter. Getting the GED was a gesture, attained benchmark he could now move on from, and not like he was going to go get a dumb hourly gig anyway.

His lost dreams of Stanford had been replaced, and Sam was complacent and content in that. He was more this person, here, sharing a vagabond, imperfect life settled with Dean, than the person who'd forged ahead to show him that other life in flashback memories.

College was no longer a fit, nor worth any headache or heartbreak, closed chapter in his could-have-been.

Dean had taken him to dinner and Sam had made Dean eat salad with their inexpensive ribeye steak splurge. Sam had suggested they go to St Louis, next, search the sewers for some shifter creature that might be lurking and inflicting its menace there. Dean had agreed, no preference, only wanted for at least two stopovers along their way in motels cheap, quiet, and with huge and clean beds.

Sometime in Sam's seventeenth year, he and Dean had a knock down, drag out fight. It ended in Sam's throat bruised and raw from Dean's chokehold and Dean's eye blackened. Sam couldn't even remember what they'd started fighting about.

They glowered as Dean drove them, well, somewhere else. Sam huffed when Dean pulled into a motel parking lot, not in the mood to stop and be in a room and each other's prowling company, but he didn't say anything outright.

Dean ignored him. Drove around the back, put the car in park and let the engine idle, got out to rummage in the trunk. Sam would not try and figure what Dean was doing.

Soon enough Dean was back, and they drove further in further silence, until Dean found a side road off the highway, then a rutted gravel country track from there. He stilled before killing the car, exited with a gruff noise to suggest Sam follow.

Sam put in a token effort to resist, sat there. When Dean wrenched his door open he caved, let Dean guide him to sit on the hood.

Dean pushed his sternum so he'd lay against the windshield, smacked a dirty t-shirt ice pack on his neck. Clambered up beside him, matching ice pack brought to his swollen eye. Sam sighed, worked to find Draco, found Hercules, with Cepheus adjacent. Dean, as always, contemplated the dense ribbon of the Milky Way, river in reverse reflecting far above, and the cornfield was sweet-smelling, almost grown tall as the car, shushed and whispered in the wind.

It wasn't discussed but it was forgiven, when Sam inched towards Dean and Dean let him in, held tucked close. They rested there until dawn, ice melting as they mended their brief polarization, unable and no desire to deny or diffuse their infinite gravity into the other.

Sam and Dean searched for the bigger things Sam'd been compelled to warn about, stayed busy crisscrossing the country putting smaller things to rest. A crucifix necklace stolen from a pastor's young daughter and melted down. Dolls burned, a scarecrow torched. Artifacts destroyed.

A month and a half into eighteen and Sam rubbed his eyes, gritty and drooping, exhausted after a harrowing cleanse of a vampire's nest and a too-long drive. He glanced at Dean, both of them roughed up but whole, pushed the gas so Dean could get a little more sleep.

He was still here, so glad for that, wondered if this meant he was here to stay. He knew it was foolish to ascribe importance to benchmarks like becoming a legal adult when it pertained to the supernatural, but it still felt significant.

Four years later, Sam didn't think he'd be sent back. Hadn't found a way to escape. Didn't want to go.

He'd lived in correspondent spaces but the lines weren't perfect nor straight, and the delineation had decayed, drawn nearer and grayed in distinction over the years. Sam had researched in-the-now, hunts and creatures that presented themselves never known before, and all the ways he could think of and then some for ways he could get back, how this would forfeit, if the booth's intervention was a curse or a spell. He had written down everything in his memory, heart and mind, and the until-back-when is what felt unreal, instead made him incredulous to imagine being again.

Sam had concluded, unwaveringly, that this was real, time lived again, not a parallel or an illusion. Enough was mutable and unpredictable despite his presaging memories that it was a world shifting around his changes, not a stock and given set of parameters for him to try again.

He couldn't tell if it was a matter of fate being tricked or soothed.

On a whim and happenstance, Sam guided the car following brown signs and white arrows, got them to a shallow byway scenic overlook. Tugged Dean to be held into him bodily, soft kisses and meeting curves, perfect fit, so they could see the land shrouded in icy colors of prussian and slate warm to molasses and amber as the sun rose over the South Rim, the Grand Canyon far below still a black abyss of shadow.

* * *

The next several years are routine, Sam's once and again normal, the reassertion of life lived right here and today. He's here, really here, more than halfway caught up to where he'd been. There's no leaving, at this point not enough known about tomorrow to alter the differently careened and drifted course, and with each passing today, the two halves seam tighter, have almost become one. He wrote fables as much as memory, twists of perception, more present tense research and observations than anything shown to him from old.

He and Dad still butted heads, disagreed and dug harder in, from terse exchanges to shouting matches. It didn't amount to the much, because they didn't see each other often. Sam's greatest frustration with his father came from the inescapable truth of how much they were alike, and how no amount of memories or decisions would change that.

They searched for the Colt, the predictive signs of a yellow-eyed demon, asked favors from no one.

Sam was devoted to doing better, to doing right, to Dean. He suffered no claustrophobia, didn't feel trapped. Their days mostly humdrum in the keeping of a vagabond hunter's mien, salted with danger, adrenaline and injury, battle and survival, putting the bad things down. He spent long hours writing while Dean slept, all delicious and sprawled and sated, thanks to Sam's mouth, hands, their unending greed.

For Dean's twenty-sixth birthday, Sam took them to the Upper Peninsula, decided they needed a break. He provisioned them with relative luxury in a cabin he'd years ago made note was a great place to squat. They toasted marshmallows, sat sharing coffee wrapped in blankets to watch it snow, lazed and enjoyed themselves. Each other. They trade, who's behind and who's over, ankles up or hands dug deep, who's on and who's in. Fuck in the corona of the fire, fuck on the floor, make a mess of the cabin's musty but comfortable double bed.

Late, late in the night, while the fire danced and their heartbeats sang and Sam was full-in Dean, he stilled, looked and looked at Dean then rested their foreheads together, made Dean wait, wouldn't move, breathed.

He didn't remember anything but this, want and need and completion, in this.

Sam started a new journal, after another round and Dean's eventual sleep. He had no further memories to try and catch, cling to, use as a cypher and guide for the future. Instead he wrote down observations, real and outright research, kept tally and pace with the things foretold that had come to pass and those not yet realized.

He tossed a log onto the fire, let it settle, added a second. They would burn, no question, heat banked low and steady, so he left them to it.

Sam snapped open the briefcase where he kept his growing library of filled journals, lining sewn thick with guardian symbols and magical traps. He filed the latest away, fingered the first he'd ever written to tilt into his hand, pages worn and dog-eared and his writing brisk and crammed and frenzied. He scanned the words that had poured out of him, understood what it represented--years of his life lived informing the years of his life yet to come, relived--but the intimacy of truly knowing the experience of all it heralded was long gone.

For that, no matter how many times he revisited what he'd written, no matter how much of his present life blurred the one that had come before, there were parts of his memories that resonated. Foreboding, longing, discomfort, fleeting contentment, grief. It was all a truth, but not who he was, had become, would have to be. They were tales, personally driven lore, but memories no longer. 

Some pages were loaded with information, rife with detail, symbols and sketches and full retellings of what would happen, how it might be prevented, how to kill the thing in the end. Other pages were purposefully minimal, somehow more powerful and monolithic. They were the pages that belonged to people, not events or things.

Sam paused at one, read and reread, thought over what it might have been like knowing such a magnificent creature.

 _Castiel_ \-- large block print, centered on the page. Then under that, smaller -- _The good angel. Trust him. Pray you never meet._

He got to the fortune teller booth page, the picture of it clipped from a flyer he'd found, citations of events and the spare conclusions he'd made based on exhaustive research. It was a page he'd returned to, over and again, never received answers from his pilgrimages.

_Not a threat. Works for some. No repercussions? Don't risk it._

Sam became absorbed in his study of the booth, remembering based on his own retellings and this page that he'd used it for a wish, that the wish had, for all intents, brought him here. He couldn't remember it truly, as a time experienced and carried with him; he couldn't even remember his actual wish, but he knew it'd happened and was grateful.

His wish granted hadn't been for a single, desperate moment, but an entire second chance. His one good thing who he was to Dean, and for Dean to always have.

"Hey, like in _Big_ , right?"

Dean dropped behind Sam, startled Sam from reverie, settled his arms around Sam and chin heavy and comfortable on Sam's shoulder.

Sam shivered, felt momentarily displaced. The fire snapped and they were just out of reach of its heat.

"Sammy?" Dean turned into Sam's neck, lifted a hand to Sam's heart.

"Just--whoa--deja vu all over again." Sam laughed and shook his head, circled Dean's wrist with his fingers. "I'm fine."

Dean had come to take the vagaries and patterns of Sam's visions and overthink behaviors in stride. He hummed into Sam's neck, and Sam felt his grin.

"Only fine? How about we put the book away, ratchet things up a bit. We're already almost to _good_." Dean's other hand pinched Sam's hip then started to wander.

Sam licked his lips, wash of heat and wanting replacing all other feeling, sensation, thought. The journals were shut away, easily, locks clicked and contents forgotten. He twisted, grabbed Dean's shoulder, bit at Dean's jaw.

"Sounds great," he breathed, slithered sideways as Dean gave chase, and they stumbled and laughed and groped their way, fell tangled in bed.

They lingered in that cabin a languorous two weeks, past their supplies running out and the one good break in the weather. Then it was back to reality, trawling for hunts unknown and searching for those foretold. Spring arrived, green and fresh, and Sam made Dean take trails in national parks and state parks and wildlife preserves. Dean complained, liked it a lot, laughed when Sam mentioned that besides, might nab a Sasquatch or Wendigo.

Summer was hot, punished the car like it'd melt the tires into the very road as they drove. On July Fourth they barbecued, almost burned Bobby's scrapyard down with bottle rockets and Roman candles. They helped Dad here and there when more than two hands were required, but mostly they stuck to their preference, just the two of them. On Halloween Sam asserted they find someplace quiet and without a doorbell to hide away instead of skulking around scamming candy.

Dean had feigned disbelief and indignation, crumbled then gleefully caved, when Sam offered pie and blowjobs instead.

The next morning Sam woke with a groan, not ready to be up and certainly not ready to have been abandoned by Dean's heat and touch and nakedness.

He muttered into the pillow, made grumpy noises, wanted to be sure Dean understood he wasn't happy with this or the light being on. Dean ignored him, so Sam grumped louder, rolled pointedly to hide in the curve of his shoulder, able to block the light but see what Dean was doing.

Sam was twenty-two. He was in love with his brother and they lived in wonderfully tangled codependence; they saved people, hunted things. He made mistakes, got things wrong, carried disappointed far-flung dreams in a small and carefully locked away part of himself. Ideas of college, being a doctor or lawyer or engineer, finding a stable place to settle down, just _live_ , as if he were blissfully ignorant of what lurked behind the veil. He did his best, had started having real visions to rival the memories he'd archived and cloistered all these years, was practical in knowing this was the life he was meant to live.

He smiled fondly, watching Dean, the only constant and always his anchor, be it now or memory.

"Sam." Dean knew he was awake, didn't turn, finished packing gear into the weapons upkeep and repair kit.

He grumbled in answer.

Finally Dean stood, walked to the bed, reached down and tugged at Sam's bangs.

"You know Dad's been on that hunt." Dean raised a brow, waited, so Sam nodded. 

There was a short list of monsters it could be, crosscheck of Sam's journals, timing, clues revealed in Dad's vague conversations leading to this hunt.

"Well--we haven't heard from him in a few days. More than is usual." Dean left it there, meaningfully, took in Sam's length and still-comfy warmth in the bed, then with a regretful sigh moved away again.

Sam grunted hollow complaint, but he knew Dean was right. This was more than Dad getting lost in a bottle or the obsession of a new case. It was very likely what he and Dean had wondered for awhile would actually happen--had prepared for without dire futility or absolute certainty or fear--Dad gone missing, a harbinger of Yellow Eyes' advent into this realm and their lives.

He stretched and swung his legs off the bed, stood and stretched further. "I know, I know. We've got work to do."


End file.
